Eerie satellite images over the years have captured a look at what appears to be a massive white coffin floating through the pitch-black waters off the coast of Antarctica.

And now, fittingly, scientists say the spooky chunk of ice is on its way to a place that’s come to be known as the ‘iceberg graveyard.’

The strangely-shaped slab of ice has spent the last 18 years drifting at sea after splitting off of the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000.

Unfortunately, it’s headed north toward warmer waters, in a journey notorious for rapidly melting similar icebergs.

Scientists say a spooky chunk of ice is on its way to a place that’s come to be known as the ‘iceberg graveyard.’ The coffin-shaped slab of ice has spent the last 18 years drifting at sea after splitting off of the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. It was spotted in September as it drifted northward to warmer waters

It’s almost hard to believe a breathtaking photo of the iceberg, captured by an ISS astronaut in late September, is real.

The huge white expanse of ice is shaped almost perfectly like a coffin, with six points and an elongated body that tapers asymmetrically on each end.

And, it’s enshrouded in a layer of puffy clouds, adding to its spooky aura.

According to NASA, though, this shape is the product of entirely natural phenomena over the course of its long life at sea.

‘This fracturing is akin to “cleaving” a mineral crystal with a sharp tap of hammer,’ says NASA/UMBC glaciologist Chris Shuman.

‘The coffin shape is an accident of time and space, given the approximately 18.5-year voyage of B-15T. We can only guess at the forces that have acted on this remnant of B-15 along the long way around Antarctica.’

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An eerie satellite image taken last year captured a look at what appears to be a white coffin floating through the pitch-black waters off the coast of Antarctica. In the view, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite, it can be seen it drifting through the South Atlantic between South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

The iceberg, known as B-15T, had made its way out of the Southern Ocean by the time the September photo was snapped.

Another view captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows it drifting through the South Atlantic between South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands that same day.

This area, NASA says, is ‘where icebergs go to die.’

Here, the waters tend to be much warmer than those of the Southern Ocean, spelling doom for the icebergs that pass through it.

Last year, it was pushed northward by the Weddell Sea gyre, and it’s been churning on ever since. ‘The Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which funnels through the Drake Passage, then steered the iceberg toward the east and its current location,’ NASA says. But, the space agency notes, ‘the spooky shape of B-15T was acquired long before it moved into this iceberg graveyard’

This coupled with the time of year mean the odds are stacked against B-15T.

According to NASA, the Southern Hemisphere winter was coming to a close when the iceberg was spotted in September, ‘so the return of abundant sunlight could further warm the water around it.’

‘The lack of sea ice in the vicinity of B-15T implies that the water was above the freezing point,’ the space agency added.

WHAT DO RECENT STUDIES REVEAL ABOUT ANTARCTICA?

A special issue of Nature has published a series of studies looking at how monitoring Antarctica from space is providing crucial insights into its response to a warming climate.

Here are their key findings:

Three trillion tonnes of ice has been lost from Antarctica since 1992

The Antarctic Ice Sheet lost around three trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017, according to research led by Leeds University.

This figure corresponds to a mean sea-level rise of about eight millimetres (1/3 inch), with two-fifths of this rise coming in the last five years alone.

The finds mean people in coastal communities are at greater risk of losing their homes and becoming so-called climate refugees than previously feared.

In one of the most complete pictures of Antarctic ice sheet change to date, an international team of 84 experts combined 24 satellite surveys to yield the results.

It found that until 2012 Antarctica lost ice at a steady rate of 76 billion tonnes per year - a 0.2mm (0.008 inches) per year contribution to sea level rise.

However, since then there has been a sharp, threefold increase.

At some point since the last Ice Age, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was smaller than it is today

Researchers previously believed that since the last ice age, around 15,000 years ago, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) was getting smaller

However, new research published by Northern Illinois University shows that between roughly 14,500 and 9,000 years ago, the ice sheet below sea level was even smaller than today.

Over the following millennia, the loss of the massive amount of ice that was previously weighing down the seabed spurred an uplift in the sea floor.

Then the ice sheet began to regrow toward today's configuration.

'The WAIS today is again retreating, but there was a time since the last Ice Age when the ice sheet was even smaller than it is now, yet it didn't collapse,' said Northern Illinois University geology professor Reed Scherer, a lead author on the study.

'That's important information to have as we try to figure out how the ice sheet will behave in the future', he said.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet was stable throughout the last warm period

The stability of the largest ice sheet on Earth is an indication to scientists that it could hold up as temperatures continue to rise.

If all the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, the sea level would rise by 175 feet (53 metres).

However, unlike the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets it seems it would be resistant to melting as conditions warm, according to research from Purdue University and Boston College.

Their research showed that land-based sectors of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet were mostly stable throughout the Pliocene (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago).

This is when carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were close to what they are today - around 400 parts per million.

'Based on this evidence from the Pliocene, today's current carbon dioxide levels are not enough to destabilise the land-based ice on the Antarctic continent,' said Jeremy Shakun, lead author of the paper and assistant professor of earth and environmental science at Boston College.

'This does not mean that at current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, Antarctica won't contribute to sea level rise.

'Marine-based ice very well could and in fact is already starting to contribute, and that alone holds an estimated 20 meters of sea level rise,' he said.

Decisions in the next decade will determine whether Antarctica contributes to a metre of sea level rise

One of the largest uncertainties in future sea-level rise predictions is how the Antarctic ice sheet reacts to human-induced global warming.

Scientists say that time is running out to save this unique ecosystem and if the right decisions are not made in the next ten years there will be no turning back.

Researchers from Imperial College London assessed the state of Antarctica in 2070 under two scenarios which represent the opposite extremes of action and inaction on greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the high emissions and low regulations narrative, Antarctica and the Southern Ocean undergo widespread and rapid change, with global consequences.

By 2070, warming of the ocean and atmosphere has caused dramatic loss of major ice shelves, leading to increased loss of grounded ice from the Antarctic Ice Sheet and an acceleration in global sea level rise.

Under the low emissions and tight regulations narrative, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and implementation of effective policy helps to minimise change in Antarctica, which in 2070 looks much like it did in the early decades of the century.

This results in Antarctica's ice shelves remaining intact, slowing loss of ice from the ice sheet and reducing the threat of sea level rise.

What saved the West Antarctic Ice Sheet 10,000 years ago will not save it today

The retreat of the West Antarctic ice masses after the last Ice Age was reversed surprisingly about 10,000 years ago, scientists found.

In fact it was the shrinking itself that stopped the shrinking: relieved from the weight of the ice, the Earth crust lifted and triggered the re-advance of the ice sheet.

According to research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) this mechanism is much too slow to prevent dangerous sea-level rise caused by West Antarctica's ice-loss in the present and near future.

Only rapid greenhouse-gas emission reductions can, researchers found.

'The warming after the last Ice Age made the ice masses of West Antarctica dwindle,' said Torsten Albrecht from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

'Given the speed of current climate-change from burning fossil fuels, the mechanism we detected unfortunately does not work fast enough to save today's ice sheets from melting and causing seas to rise.'

The world's ice shelves may be being destabilised by forces from above and below

Researchers found that warm ocean water flowing in channels beneath Antarctic ice shelves is thinning the ice from below so much that the ice in the channels is cracking.

Surface meltwater can then flow into these fractures, further destabilising the ice shelf and increasing the chances that substantial pieces will break away.

The researchers, led by the University of Texas at Austin, documented this mechanism in a major ice break up, or calving, event in 2016 at Antarctica's Nansen Ice Shelf.

The findings are concerning because ice shelves, which are floating extensions of continental glaciers, slow down the flow of ice into the ocean and help control the rate of sea level rise, according to the study.

'We are learning that ice shelves are more vulnerable to rising ocean and air temperatures than we thought,' said Professor Christine Dow, lead author of the study.

'There are dual processes going on here. One that is destabilising from below, and another from above.

'This information could have an impact on our projected timelines for ice shelf collapse and resulting sea level rise due to climate change', he said.

Iceberg B-15T broke off the ice shelf 18 years ago, broke into smaller and smaller pieces over time.

Last year, it was pushed northward by the Weddell Sea gyre, and it’s been churning on ever since.

‘The Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which funnels through the Drake Passage, then steered the iceberg toward the east and its current location,’ NASA says.

But, the space agency notes, ‘the spooky shape of B-15T was acquired long before it moved into this iceberg graveyard.’